Friday, July 10

Jus gladiiMeaning "the right of the sword", referring to the legal authority of an individual or group to execute someone for a capital offense.

Would I personally shoot Shiney Ahuja in the head if I was given the chance to?

Yes.

Yahoo! reported Shiney Ahuja, who was accused of raping his maidservant, recently released this statement through his lawyer:

"She belongs to a lower caste, which is aggressive by nature, and she wouldn't have submitted herself so easily. They are known for being aggressive.

Rape cases can be easily concocted. It's hard to prove them and even harder to defend. Prima facie, the case has become a little doubtful. Why didn't the victim try to run from the crime site, if she had not relented to his sexual advances.

Some of the tests have proved that sexual intercourse had occurred. So we are not refuting that part. We are just contending on the allegation that the victim was raped."

I stopped reading after "they are known for being aggressive."

It's amazing how little effort it takes to blow something that is a sexual crime into a caste issue. Plus if this is the only argument that dude has as a defense, I'm sure Ahuja's going to be stuck in prison for a really, really long time..

Saturday, July 4

Friday, July 3

ab absurdoLatin: a suggestion or statutory interpretation that is, or leads to, an absurdity / Establishment of the validity of a person's position by pointing out the ridiculousness (absurdity) or foolishness of the opponent’s arguments.

It took me about 20 minutes before I stopped laughing like a mad scientist on the verge of revealing a diabolical plan to his arch enemy, the masked vigilante, which is the saddest thing he could have done, because, we all know he's going to be thwarted and run off scampering like a dog. OK, I just lost my train of thought.

Oh, yeah. Laughter.

Apparently, the Nepalese anti-corruption authority is banning airport officials from wearing pants with pockets stitched to them because they believe - wait for it - pockets are the reason people take bribes. *gasp*

No, no. I'm not even kidding. They released a press statement and everything.

In times like this, you have to wonder: Shouldn't they be banning stuff like socks, gloves and thermal underwear? I don't care if people die of hypothermia in Nepal, clothes can be used to store bribe money and 10mL vials of nitroglycerine too. Just saying...

Of unnatural offenses - Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with [imprisonment for life] or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Explanation - Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offense described in the section.

As of today: VOID.

In Delhi, that is. The rest of the country probably needs to wait till the Parliament can amend the Constitution.

After months of speculation, the Delhi High Court finally legalised consensual sex between consenting adults of the same sex. The Court said:

"We declare that Section 377 of IPC in so far as it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private is violative of Articles 14, 21 and 15 of the Constitution.

The provision of Section 377 of the IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors.

In our view, Indian constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconception of who the LGBTs (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is the antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual."

That's just a piece of the 105-page judgement, one that follows on to quote Nehru and the like, but I'll just leave that bit out.

Here's my take on this:

1) In your face, conservative-people-who-comment-on-Rediff-News-while-pretending-like-their-
opinion-is-the-only-one-that-matters! Destroying Indian culture, are we? It's all sorts of pathetic that someone would define culture and put it in restrictive bindings, especially since culture is meant to be dynamic. It is forever changing, and I welcome this one.

2) This is for those people who still think calling someone a 'fag' is an insult: They have rights now, man. So if you're in school and you see a guy unable to defend his goalpost when playing soccer, don't push your luck.

3) Which genius put the clauses on "equality" and "right to personal liberty" (Articles 14, 15 and 21) in the Constitution and still thought it would be OK to criminalise consensual inter-gender sex? It's funnier still, since we stuck by it for some 60-odd years now.

4) Do I have to buy another copy of the Criminal Major Acts now? Or can I just strike out the entire clause off it? Actually, the latter would give me immense satisfaction.

Now that that's done, I need to go brush up on Contracts - BIG test next week. Might have helped if I was actually paying attention in class, but I was kinda busy playing Hangman under the desk instead.

Wednesday, July 1

The battle between tort and torts will always rage on, and frankly I couldn't care less.

Except when the other law class tells you that the lecturer took a test.

There was this eerie silence followed by some 60-odd people randomly running to the 20-odd people they knew had the Law of Torts text. Like that'd help... I'm pretty sure I failed.

That was a swell way to start the year :)

Boring fact:Did you know that in legal terminology, 'damage' and 'damages' are two different terms?'Damage' is any harm done to a person or his property.'Damages' is compensation received by a person due to a damage sustained by him.

A Slightly More Fun FactAs per Section 497 under the Indian Penal Code, if a man commits adultery with a married woman (with or without the other man's consent, by the way) the man can be penalized but the woman doesn't. So we can make a big deal about voting and driving and drinking, but when it comes to cheating on you respective other, it's morally all right for us? Sometimes, feminism is almost the same as hypocrisy.

Tuesday, June 30

It took two solid weeks for me to finally get bored of the class schedule. It took most about 10 hours. Meh, pessimists.

I think the first blow came when a bunch of us missed out on this personality development class that was supposedly mandatory, but that wasn't really made clear. And those who stayed only did so because the didn't want to get back home drenched in the rain. Except me; I was too sleepy to notice there was a shift in the attendance equilibrium, or to make an effort to get up from the make-shift bed I had created at my desk. Well, we got royally screwed for that, and college hasn't been the same since.

The second round was when I got tired of the cafeteria food. It's still pretty awesome, but where's the fun in it when you know it's just bad as hell for you?

The third? No fresher's party. I'm not even kidding.

My seniors are cool: they help you out when you hesitate to lift a Supreme Court record journal from the library in the fear that the groaning noise of the shelves shifting from the weight might cause some major embarrassment, and they pretend like they're going to rag the hell out of you, but you know it's never going to happen since they college is very strict about those things. So all we want from them is a casual fresher's party where we can get to know them.

And where we can get stoned. Or whatever people do at fresher's parties.

What? OK, maybe they don't always get stoned, but how would I know? I've never been to one, and we all know who's fault that is now.

Monday, June 29

mandamusn. Latin for "we order," a writ (more modernly called a "writ of mandate") which orders a public agency or governmental body to perform an act required by law when it has neglected or refused to do so. - Dictionary.law.com

I'm not a "public agency" or even remotely government-related (yet). I'm a plain old 1st-year, Indian law student and I'm pretty sure I can't get through the next five years without chronicling the journey.